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Forget press releases – for indies, quality is the best marketing skill Lewis Denby Game If You Are
AS the indie game market becomes more competitive, developers are desperate for ways to become more visible. And as thousands descend on Cologne in the hopes of expanding their network of contacts and showing off their latest creation, many will be searching for ways to stand out in people’s inboxes ahead of the show. There are many resources online telling indie developers how to craft the perfect press kit, how to email journalists and how to present their games at events. It’s all great, and important, information. But increasingly, there seems to be a misconception among many indie studios – especially first-time commercial developers – that simply being indie is enough to give you a lift. That your rags-to-hopefully-riches story will be enough to steal those precious column inches and that your lovingly homemade launch trailer will charm the pants off anyone who sees it. This may have been true in 2008, but fastforward a decade and things are very different. The indie game scene is supremely oversaturated. During a busy period, literally hundreds of indie games can be released in a single week. And although there are plenty of unremarkable games, many of them are very good: professional projects that scream quality at every turn. Simply having made an indie game isn’t impressive any more – in fact, it’s fast becoming old news. And make no mistake: this is a discerning market. More than any other interest segment I’ve come across, gamers are astonishingly good at telling apart a great product from a merely okay one, even before they’ve picked up the controller. For games journalists, influencers and
other industry figures – whose livelihood depends on being experts – the task is easy. There’s no pretending a mediocre game is anything more. That’s why the ability to produce consistently exceptional content is a vital skill for an indie developer to learn. This starts with the game itself: time and time again, I see simple, polished ideas grabbing people’s attention, while impressively ambitious projects – too ambitious for their tiny team to truly pull off – continue to fail. But by no means does it stop there. That quality must exude from everything you show. Your screenshots, your trailer, your website, your Steam page description – they all speak to the level of professionalism with which you’re approaching your project, and give pointers about how good your game is likely to be when it finally launches. It’s this belief in quality, the ability for people to see how professional and polished your work is, that so often leads to publicity and other commercial opportunities. Journalists, influencers, publishers – they’re all essentially looking for the same thing. They want to find projects they believe in and that they feel confident putting in front of their audiences. A large component of your job, as a commerciallyfocused indie developer, is showing that you can be trusted to deliver that. After all, the indie scene is filled with people who can, so why would they settle for less? Lewis Denby is the director of indie game PR consultancy Game If You Are. Having started his career as a journalist, he’s worked around indie games for more than a decade.
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